Chinese Diamonds for the King of KingsGoforth, Rosalind
Religion
Chinese Diamonds for the King of Kings
Goforth, Rosalind
Missions -- China
"Get the nurse out, drag her out, we will have her!" And for a few
terrible moments it seemed we would lose her, but God in His great mercy
heard the cry that went up for her. A man came through the crowd,
evidently one of some influence, and shouted: "Don’t touch her, leave
her alone; don’t you see there are children and they need her?" So we
were allowed to pass on.
In those terrible days that followed, when almost starved, when sickness
came to first one and then another, when all were exhausted and tried to
the lost point of endurance, Mrs. Cheng thought not for one moment of
herself, but only for those she served. During all those hard, hard
days not a word of complaint or of her own sufferings escaped her.
Almost a month from the time we left our home we reached Shanghai and
here we had to part with our faithful helper. It was arranged that Mrs.
Cheng should go to a friend of ours in Chefoo till the troubles were
over, and we return to the Homeland.
Last words of farewell were being said at Mrs. Cheng’s cabin door, as
her steamer was about to leave. The dear woman clung to me unwilling to
part and her last words were:
"Oh, my Shepherd Mother, do take good care of the children!" So smiles
were mixed with tears as we parted.
* * *
Two years passed. Conditions were once more becoming normal, or nearly
so. Missionaries were returning to their various stations, but could
we, who had been through that Baptism of Blood, ever be just the same as
before? We had been spared for further service, while others had been
TRANSLATED. Surely we had been saved to serve as never before. A new
and difficult life was entered upon—the opening of new out-stations, the
breaking of new ground. All through the years of that life when
traveling constantly from place to place, Mrs. Cheng was a patient and
willing sharer in all the hardness and a never failing source of comfort
to me. Never once in all those years, that I can recall, did this woman
ever get really angry or even out of temper with the children, and it
was a life that tried temper and patience to the utmost.
The years have passed on and with them the _little_ children from our
care, but Mrs. Cheng remains. Although sixty years of age she appears
in some things to be renewing her youth! During the recent war, when we
women were trying to do our "bit" through the Red Cross, Mrs. Cheng came
to me one day and begged me to allow her to take my place at the sewing
machine. At first I refused, but finally let her try but with some fear
lest she break the needle. To my great surprise she was soon able to go
on with the Red Cross work quite alone; indeed she came to make the
soldiers’ garments so well as to call forth special praise from the Red
Cross Headquarters. This greatly surprised me, for I could never get her
to attempt to learn the machine when the children were small. One day I
asked her why this was so, and her reply was:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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